Tag Archives: SEOmoz

We think the new rankings algorithm is based on Supervised Learning and raw statistical analysis that Google uses. The change is probably simple, and frankly very logical. I have two blogs listed at the end of this article you can read for more and better detailed information.

Google Chrome (Photo credit: thms.nl)

Before the panda and penguin updates at Google It was too easy to use on site tactics ( Keywords and H1 Tags and meta titles) to influence rankings.

Google is now moving too, and undoubtedly is using more off site context, and content to determine what your site should rank for. To do that they probably look at all the “citations” (mentions) for your site, in what ever format they appear, and have a raw statistical analysis of the relevancy, and then the context.

The results would be very much in line with what we have seen with the Panda and Penguin updates and algorithm changes. If your site
has been listed in a bunch of directories that have SEO or Rankings in the titles then Google starts with this:

You say your site is about Insurance.

Sites about or related to Insurance that you are listed on or mentioned: 3
Sites not about Insurance or related topics you are listed on: 200

You get credit for the three, and how much credit would depend on the Authority of the page and site you are listed on.

One of the interesting consequences of all this is the no follow or follow link value disappears. As many “citations” may not have a link to your site.

So, in summary:

A Citation or link is only going to help you if it comes from a site or page that Google see’s as relevant to your site.That’s one reason your rankings dropped off the face of the earth if you where primarily using non relevant sites.

Words matter. Google probably (using raw statistical analysis) looks at what a relevant page citation says about your site, or the content about your site on that page. ( Co-citation’s and such)

Follow or not, a high authority site citation with a link or without is still good for your sites Authority, and ranking.

On site signals continue to be important, but they only point Google in a direction to determine your sites Authority theywon’t help your ranking on their own.

Interesting example.

We recently built a 2 page site about a specific remodeling type project. We wanted to test the exact match domain changes. The site
url is (Project Type) in (City).
We added it to 4 or 5 sites that were related directly to Remodeling. We may have tweeted it, and added it to a facebook comment.

Two months later it was ranked number 1 for that very specific keyword, and on the first page for that keyword phrase in different form. It was (and is) ranking higher than several sites that have been around for a long time and had SEO companies working on for years (at least to an extent).

We originally thought the the exact match domain for local sites was still a very important ranking factor and it was that simple. Now, I think if we had back linked the same 2 page site to 4 or 5 unrelated directories… or sites, that it would have never been ranked. Well, only one way to find out. Check back in a few months. We will give you an up date.

All of this is admittedly a very simplistic view of the new Google ranking changes. There are many other important factors. Our point is to communicate that many of the old SEO tactics don’t work any more, and why. For us, it’s all good news, as we have followed the
“act as if Google doesn’t exist” principle in SEO for years (to the extent any Internet marketing company like My One Call LLC can).
Our clients didn’t see any rankings drop over the last 6 months based on these new changes.

I was interested in what page and domain authority the top three search engine optimization sites have for the largest cities in the United States. You can take a look at the numbers and see how your site currently ranks compared to the top SEO sites in major US cities.

I am using the free SEOmoz browser tools, so any one can duplicate this test, in what ever niche you like.

I’ll be looking at each city leaders individually later, to see if we can find some commonalities in how they achieve these rankings. Hint, many do web design as well as SEO and have the normal “web design by” link on the home page of the sites they have built, giving them a huge advantage over search engine optimization companies that do not provide web design services.

The good news is I don’t see much black hat or at least questionable linking or on site tactics, and that does seem to confirm that the tricky SEO’s, using what could be called black hat tactics, don’t do well when it comes down to competitive rankings. I mean “search engine optimization ” should be a pretty competitive term right?

Chicago: Search Tern “Chicago Search Engine Optimization”

Top 3 sites

PA: 59, 64,59

DA: 51, 65, 64

Houston: Search Term “Houston Search Engine Optimization”

Top 3 sites

PA: 52, 64, 61

DA: 42, 58, 54

Los Angeles: Search Term ” Los Angeles Search Engine Optimization”

Top 3 sites

PA: 65, 60, 63

A: 57, 58, 55

How About Phoenix ( Yes it is one of the top 5 populated cities you east coast snobs ;))

Top 3 Phoenix SEO Sites
PA: 44, 57, 62
DA: 32, 48, 54

Guess we better do New York ( I didn’t put them first because they are always first)
Top 3 New York Search Engine Optimization sites
PA: 64, 78, 70
DA: 56, 75, 100 <<< That 100 is a youtube video. hmm…

So how do these compare to the mid market cities? Lets look at Jacksonville Florida, 11th in US population (Who knew?)

Top 3 Jacksonville Florida Search Engine Optimization sites.

PA: 51, 46, 55
DA: 41, 36, 57

Let’s take the 17th largest city ( I picked this number randomly before I looked at the list)
Charlotte North Carolina (A pleasant surprised, as I have spent time in Charlotte, and always enjoyed it’s splendid hospitality.)

Top 3 Sites:
PA: 39, 59, 38
DA: 27, 56, 64

And just for comparison lets do Cheyenne Wyoming, only because I know it’s small. I mean really small.

Top 3 Sites Cheyenne search engine optimization. (I actually give you 4 because I thought number 4 was funny)

PA: 47, 23, 37, 01
DA: 65,11,25, 04

Yes friends, the 4th ranked site has a 01 page authority and a 04 domain authority according to SEOmoz. The third ranked site is in Atlanta (I think) and its site appears to be down currently.

Now don’t go rushing off to expand your SEO company into Cheyenne. You don’t belong there son. Trust me, I played in a Country and western band and toured in Wyoming.

And the summary:

City

PA 1

PA 2

PA 3

Total PA top 3

New York

64

78

70

212

L.A.

65

60

63

188

Chicago

59

64

59

182

Houston

52

64

61

177

Phoenix

44

57

62

163

Jacksonville

51

46

55

152

Cheyenne

47

23

37

107

Your PA Here

No surprises that I can see, but it does give you a pretty good idea what your site PA and DA would need to be to compete for the coveted first page top 3 rankings for”your City search engine optimization”.

I hope to get a little deeper into assessing the commonalities of these sites over the next month. I’ll look at where the links come from. on site factors, and all the stuff you would look at if you were doing it. Let me know what you think I should be looking at, or do your own and let me know if you find any thing interesting. You can subscribe to our newsletter >>>>>>>> over there in the right column, if you want to see more detailed things on how to SEO, or tips and such.

Until then, I’ll see you in Cheyenne!

Here is a good article on how we sell Search Engine optimization services click here ( Don’t laugh at click here, it’s good anchor text!)

And in the spirit of helping our friends doing SEO in Cheyenne I give you some juice love. SEO in Cheyenne

I know we are a bit early here, but I wanted to make one prediction about the annual local search ranking factors report that is published each year on the excellent blog about local search, at http://www.davidmihm.com

Local SEO’s love this report, and will invest a large amount of time reading and assessing each area they rate. I have always enjoyed reading the opinions of the some of the largest and best SEO firms in the world and comparing their thoughts on how important certain things are to your sites local ranking (Maps, places) to what I have seen over the year.

Question: H0w Important are Citations to ranking?

Traditional the consensus has always ranked “Citations” as one of the most important ranking factors. Once you get past the obvious factors of the address, claiming a listing, and the categories you use, it’s the top dog! And in 2009 I think that was true.

Answer: Citations just are not very important any more!

Here is my prediction, and the reason behind it. The number and quality of Citations ranking factor will drop from very important to just important, maybe as low as number 8 on the top 10 factors. Now here is my opinion based on what I have seen and bloged about for a year.

Citations are close to meaningless for ranking factor. And all of the local SEO companies who are still chasing citations are 14 months behind the curve. All of this changed in October 2010 and has continued to change with all the panda updates through out 2010. Today, your local rankings are based 98% on the same factors that you use in organic search Engine optimization, once you get past the already stated factors of having a local listing, and making sure you fill it out correctly.

Chasing the wrong stuff for local SEO

In a nutshell, it’s not a citation that makes any difference, it’s the quality of the page that listing and link (if included) is on. A very well respected SEO blog (and deserving so) recently published the top 100 (I think, may have been 200) citation sites. So today and next week, and next year local seo’s will be taking their clients money and using a bunch of these “Top 100” to try and increase their clients ranking. What a waste.

In the vast majority of cases, Google only looks at the page the citation is on and that specific pages value, not the domain. So when your site is listed on (Pick one of the top so named citation sites) if the page your site is on has no or low P.A. value (Page authority as published by SEOmoz) or any of the other page quality tools you want to use that look at number of inbound links, and number of out bound, SEO juice from the other pages, and all that) then you have wasted your time. The bad news is the vast majority of the “top Citation Sites” fall into a low or no PA value for the page you end up listing on, and right now, because the mainstream SEO’s have not caught up to this lot’s of businesses are wasting a portion of their dollars on tactics that have not worked since 2009.

So why would I publish this, when my competitor’s read this blog, and it can be a great help in their business? Because I truly do believe that what helps one business helps all businesses, and that the small business clients they have will benefit through this information.

But then again, I could be wrong, as most everything in SEO is an opinion. I do feel confident in this information, as since we changed our strategies and tactics to reflect the new local search world, we have seen a 100% first page top 3 ranking for every client.

Help me, help you, help me, help you.

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If we can help you as either a business seeking a better Internet strategy, or a small SEO looking for addional help or support, please contact me through our site, or call me directly at 303 500 3053 ext 1

We get a lot of questions about what sites to add that are good for Google Local Citations. Even with the recent changes to Google Places (not showing citations anymore) there is a considerable amount of belief that adding a “citation” link to your back link’s can be helpful in your Google Places rankings.

In our experience, adding sites for the primary purpose of gaining a citation had lost most of its value last year. We don’t make this statement out of simple opinion, but based on assessing local web sites places rankings for over 4 years.

For a brief time we thought Google may have just stopped indexing the deep pages associated with many of the common citation sites people would use. An example may have been a listing on Merchant Circle. Merchant Circle was built around (according to their PR) getting a local site ranked higher and bringing it more local traffic. I am not picking on them, there are hundreds of on line yellow page sites, and directories that web masters, SEO’s and others used for adding citations and trying to boost their sites rankings in Local directories. The truth seems to be; today those sites have almost no value in bring your local site traffic or rankings!

But Google does continue to index these pages. One difference between a year ago and now (August 2011) is many of these citations don’t show up as a link in our back link reports. And it’s not that we use just one back link reporting tool, we use 5 different tools, because you get different information from each, depending on their methodology on how they acquire the back links to a site. We also do manual checks to as a final scrub so to speak. So those lead us to looking at it in a different light. That being, more from a link value stand point, than a citation value.

So what happened? And how can we learn from it.

Our opinion is pretty simple and falls in line with the basic principle that Google is looking for the best quality sites for a keyword search. We think this started in the Local search area with last October’s update when Google changed significantly how a Local Maps listing was ranked, by blending the organic ranking factors into the Maps results, or to be more accurate, by weighting those factors far more heavily. And these local ranking factors have continued to evolve with the Panda updates this year.

Here is our thought. Pre Google changes the domain authority of the site you had a citation or link on was far more important than it is today, with the Page authority having less importance. Let’s take a completely made up model of that.

Your link appears on a P.R. 7 site. ( I know PR is not the metric to use and we don’t, but it’s the commonly understood vernacular of basic SEO) and your site appears on a page that has no external links to it or any real ranking authority of it’s own. In the old days it was clear your site still received some value based on the domain authority. Lets call it a formula like this. Link value equals: ( Domain Authority / 2 )+( Page authority / outbound links on page). DO NOT TRY AND ANALYZE THIS FORMULA. I made it up and its only supposes to show that the domain had a higher influence on the Link value.

We think today Google is primarily looking at the page authority of your link or citation, and has discounted significantly the added value of the Domain Authority (P.R., or SEOmoz DA) . So a link or citation is as good as the Page it’s on, not the Domain it’s on.

Is it really this simple? No! Those people at Google are smart as a whip as my Mom use to say (I still don’t get that saying, or was it sharp as a whip, or tack? ) But for those of us who work on web visibility and promotion, it’s a good guide, and it’s working for us.

And it is in complete harmony with Google’s public position on why sites rank well. More on that statement later.

Like all opinions on what makes a web site rank well, this is just an opinion. It does seem to be proving accurate to the extent we can test it with our web promotion programs. We would love to hear from others on what they see as important ranking factors. Remember our Golden Rule of SEO. If you would take a certain action irregardless of how it will affect your sites ranking, and only because it will give your site better traffic and visibility, it’s a good thing to do. If you are taking an action solely for the perceived value it will bring in your sites ranking, it’s not going to help long term.

P.S. (Bad news for all those marketing companies promoting that they will add a link to your site on 100 P.R. 7 blogs for $7.00. huh?

SEO is a tricky little devil these days. Ultimately the bottom line on any SEO program is how much new profitable business you have come from it.

If you are looking for reports about the effectiveness of your SEO programs we thought we would show you what we produce for clients. This is a partial quarterly report.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

M and E Painting. 3 month Report on Status of Web Site Visibility and SEO for www.mandepainting.com

Suggestions:

Have your web firm add the Google 1+ button on your site.

My One Call to work on specific opportunities identified on this report. Including SEO for “Painting Contractor in” Keyword, via on site suggestions, places account and anchor text on My One Call owned sites.

Run Large Scale Keyword report to determine additional opportunities

Check why PPC is high in Fort Collins and Greely

Add social media links in August. Add no follow links. Link profile is high in Follow links.

Key word reports from Google: Based on a review of your site these are the main keywords consumers will use to find you. SEE PAGE BELOW

As you can see the main keyword is House Painting. The way Google works is if a consumer in Broomfield (or any decent size city) types in only House Painting they will get a list of the top local sites in the map section. MOVE TO PAGE BELOW

In the following example we set our browser for zip code 80021 (Broomfield) to determine your site does rank highly with or with out the “local intent” city in the search

Your site is Ranked Number two using this method.

Here is your site ranking using the local intent term in the search:

Your site is Ranked Number 1 in Maps and Number 1 Organically

Here are the same comparisons for Loveland, and Fort Collins:

Loveland with City

Loveland with browser set to zip

House Painting with Fort Collins

House painting with zip in browser (as if in Fort Collins, no city Intent)

As you can see when a consumer searches with out a “city” you are still in great positions. The national sites do show up above the map, but as we are seeking consumers looking for local painters your click rate for these searches should be similar to the local intent (city name ) searches.

The second highest searched term according to the Google keyword report is “Painting Contractors In “

Her are the rankings in your primary cities for that search.

Loveland:

Fort Collins: Opportunity to move you into the MAPS section SEE PAGE BELOW

Painting Contractor In Broomfield

Opportunity to move into Maps! Number 1 Organic

Your sites ranking is determined by two large buckets. The first is your on site optimization, which includes Meta tags, Copy, and navigation, and the second is off site optimization which is how many sites, social media, and mentions link to your site, or mention your company.

Current Back Links from Link Diagnosis.com. This report is also attached as an excel sheet with more information.

Impressions you have by Key word (how many times your site showed up in search results on Google for the keyword last 30 days.

SEE NEXT PAGE…This report generally gives you a good view of how Google see’s the keywords on your site and how Google displays your site for those terms. Google shows the following Domains linking to your

Recently there has been a great deal of discussion on the SEO forum’s and professional sites about how the Google Map rankings are changing.

We have been watching it very closely, and in a nut shell, the big difference between how you places account was ranked last year, and how they seem to get ranked this year is this:

Google places rankings now are based more on organic SEO than maps criteria. There are two elements that remain important that were and are unique to Places. First, and I know this sounds like I don’t have to say it, but you need to list your company in Google places if you are not there now, and fill out the profile with good categories. Two, the address of your business as it relates to the city center still is important.

After that, We use to add a bunch of known citation sites. Most of those don’t even show up as a citation any more, and many don’t even show up as a link. I wouldn’t forget citations, but I would down grade their importance a bunch.

Now it’s all about standard organic optimization. Get your home page up to speed (easy) and then add quality content to your site, and then add links from quality popular sites.

The best way we have found to determine how strong your site is (from an SEO prospective) is to use the free tool bar from www.seomoz.com If some or all of this is above your head, but you want to learn, SEOmoz is a great resource, as is SEO book and Majestic SEO.

Once you have it downloaded it will give you a Page Authority rank for any page you are on. It’s called PA and you need to see how the sites that are ranking above you ranked on PA, and then look at yours.

Many sites that have had very little attention will be around a 10 PA. In most local categories you will need a 25 to 40 PA for your site to get on the front page. You can learn how to add ranking to your site at any of the sites I listed above. I use the rule of thumb that you will need 10 hours SEO to get from 20-30, and 40 hours more to move from 30 to 40. If you follow with that logic you are looking at 120-160 hours to move from 40 to 50. And of course, if you are a beginner Triple the time, as you will be learning as you go.

Most SEO companies charge at least $100 to $150. an hour. If you do the math, you can then decide if SEO is viable option for your business. We have other options as well, including SEO management consulting, where we work with your employee to work through an SEO program. And we do the complete SEO programs for you as well.

If your interested in Doing your own SEO work, you may want to look at joining our Web Optimizers club. It makes your life easier

For those of us who do not possess a degree in advanced mathmatic’s, it comes down to this. If a Site get’s a lot of shares, it’s because the page or site is interesting. Interesting web sites get lot’s of attention, and getting a lot of attention brings better rankings.

So once again, the best tactic to bring up your search engine rankings is to be interesting, and be clear. Some of the better rated sites we have developed or worked on do not have contest pages, or cartoons, or tips. What they do have is very clear information about what the visitor came to the site to get.

This is very good news for the small and medium business owner who doesn’t have the budget or time to put together a multimedia extravaganza produced by the top marketing minds in the Industry. All we need to do is be very clear and informative on what our audience wants.

The mistakes we see are trying to be to many things to to many people on a page or site. If you sell both Carpet and Tile, you have two different audiences that over lap. Better to have very two different sections on your site. Be clear and communicate one message at a time.

Think through what a person wants when they come to your page. They want to trust you, they want to know what you sell (brands and styles) they want to know your where you stand on pricing, and they want to know that you are popular. You can get all that in the fold.

The best bounce rate we see on client sites is one of the most simple sites in it’s category. Highly ranked, and a 4% to 12% bounce. It’s simple, clear, and attracts the right people because of those elements.